Tag Archives: Mindfulness

They say that love is a battlefield. Forget that. Self-love is the real battlefield.

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I have been aware of my weight for the last ten years. I have been aware of the numbers on the scale going up and down over those ten years for a number of reasons including but certainly not limited to, and in no particular order:

being on ritalin for adhd

going off of ritalin

going on vyvanse for binge eating disorder and adhd

falling in love

being in a long distance relationship

being broken up with

ending relationships

my parents getting divorced

starting college

hating parts of college

putting on weight when starting birth control

counting calories and restricting my food intake to lose weight

learning a gym routine that helped me build muscle

ignoring that I was allowing myself to go back to my old eating habits as soon as I’d reach my goal weight

periods of time when I wouldn’t get on the scale for months at a time

beginning to recognize my binge eating as an eating disorder

working on understanding why I binge when it happens

going to therapy

going to acupuncture

beginning a mindful eating practice

going off of birth control after being on it for ten years

Needless to say, there have been innumerable factors that have taken me from one number to another on the life scale.

My body has gone through a lot of changes this year, which is no surprise given that it has gone through so many changes every year. But this year in particular I went off birth control, I started going to acupuncture, I started a mindful eating practice, and I fell in love- and that combination of things caused me to lose some weight that I had not set out intentionally trying to lose. Fitting into my old jeans has thrown me in a way that I was not expecting.

When I look in the mirror and I fit into jeans that I should have gotten rid of when I purged my closet of all the things I wanted to stop hoping I would someday fit into again, I’m filled with angst. I don’t know if I’ve ever written about this, but the thin and less thin versions of myself feel a bit like Jekyll and Hyde.

When I’ve been at thinner weights, I’ve gotten more attention from everyone. In the past I’ve liked that attention, and I’ve responded to it. Sometimes I’ve done reckless things because having that attention made me feel so powerful. I’ve learned a lot from that. People have assumed I was less intelligent when I’ve been thinner, which made and makes me angry. To this day, the gazes I get from men feel more predatory when I weigh less- and it’s hard to know whether I’m projecting that or not. When I’m thinner I see a younger version of myself looking back at me in the mirror, and the vibrancy of my inner child feels like it shines through more intensely. All of these feelings exist concurrently, even when at odds with each other. The times I’ve been thinner have corresponded with both self-hate (calorie counting, starvation, not going out with friends to avoid calories) and also times of self-love (working on mindful eating, listening to what my body wants and needs, responding to how certain foods make my body feel, etc). The fact that most people respond to you getting thinner in the same congratulatory way every time (not knowing what route you took to get there) feels abrasive against my heart and soul- even when they are trying to be complimentary.

When I’ve been at less thin weights, I have more anonymity within which to navigate the world. It feels like people take more more seriously- at least people who don’t know me. Maybe I take myself more seriously. I don’t worry about getting hit on, or attracting attention that I don’t want. Times of my life when I’ve weighed more have also corresponded with times of depression, and being so far into running away from my feelings that I would binge eat in a way that felt akin to blacking out. Thanks to Geneen Roth’s books in particular, I have made strides on working through my relationship with food (and yes, I had to eat a LOT of cookie dough, and gain about 15 pounds, to get to the place where I am today, some 25 pounds less).

For the first time in my life I have a partner who wants to proactively communicate and support one another in our respective struggles and journeys in self-love. For the first time in my life I have someone else to consider when thinking about doing something that is long-term harmful to my body, as does he. That is a whole new piece to this that is already having a positive impact on both of us, which feels really, really good.

At the end of the day, whether I’m 138 or 168, I’m still going to have Binge Eating Disorder. It’s still going to be something that I have to work to keep in check by constantly gravitating in and out of my self-care practice. I sat down to write this piece many times, and it was hard. These last few weeks of confusion over why I’ve been able to fit into size 4 and size 6 dresses, struggling with the fear of re-gaining weight which leads to binge eating (see how this is a negative cycle?), before coming back to self-love, compassion, and acceptance, has all been a reminder that I’m on a journey with a body that will never be permanent. I’ll leave you with a piece from “You Are Here,” that I’ve been trying to keep at the front of mind lately. Hope it helps you too. *

“Our body is not a static thing- it changes all the time. It is very important to see our physical form as something impermanent, as a river that is constantly changing. Every cell in our body is a drop of water in that river… We should train ourselves in this vision of impermanence. When we look deeply at the nature of things, we see that in fact everything is impermanent. Nothing exists as a permanent entity; everything changes. It is said that we cannot step into the same river twice. If we look for a single, permanent entity in a river, we will not find it. The same is true of our physical body. There is no such thing as a self, no absolute, permanent entity to be found in the element we call “body.” In our ignorance we believe that there is a permanent entity in us, and our pain and suffering manifest on the basis of that ignorance. If we touch deeply the non-self nature in us, we can get out of that suffering.” -Thich Nhat Hanh

There’s a reason they call self-care a practice. Unfortunately it’s not something you simply learn to do and then go on your merry way, having leveled up in the game of adulthood. No, self-care requires continual energy and awareness, and about as many hours of practice as anything else needed for mastery (10,000 hours? 100,000 hours? Still trying to convince myself I could sit still long enough to learn to play the guitar. TBD on that one).

This has been the first year that I’ve headed home for the holidays with the set intention of continuing the self care practices I’ve put in place in SF. Over thanksgiving I diligently meditated daily, and made time to exercise- even if it was only going running for 20 minutes (in the COLD). As a result of this I enjoyed the time I spent with my family more, ate more mindfully and was able to enjoy it, and kept my spending in check (in fact, by rationalizing that the $125 Madewell dress wasn’t worth it I eventually found essentially the same dress at American Apparel, on sale, for $9. George Costanza levels of excitement ensued.)

What in theory seems simple, the notion of continuing the helpful routines of daily life when out of your regular habitat, has radically changed my ability to enjoy being in places and around people that would normally trigger old behaviors that bring me stress and anxiety. Binge eating is the most common of these behaviors, and when surrounded by a lifetime of historic stressors, and delicious holiday food, it’s not hard to see why. This may have been the first Thanksgiving I didn’t anxiously devolve into binge eating followed swiftly by a dose of self-hate and the desire to get back to the West Coast so I could, “be an adult again.”

Back in San Francisco, I had dinner with my cousin, and relayed the success I’d seen in mindfully recreating my routines while in New York. I reflected on the various practices I employ to try and maintain balance (exercise, meditation, therapy, medication and soul enriching communication with friends) and during the conversation I came to an interesting realization. For so many years I thought I needed to figure out how to strong arm myself out of making the decision to binge eat in the moment. What I really needed to figure out was the right combination of self love and self care to prevent myself from reaching my breaking point where I think, “fuck this- I’m binging.”

The hardest part is keeping that in mind when I feel bad, whether physically or emotionally, and I don’t want to go to the gym or be forced to sit with my feelings while meditating. I’m not even close to mastering this, and I still have weeks where I choose chocolate and wallowing over self- love, support, acceptance and motivation.

But I’m also starting to have weeks where I actively, mindfully choose the positive behaviors- and the practice feels like it’s paying off.